A magazine is most commonly viewed as an ammunition storage and feeding device attached to a repeating firearm. The magazine functions by moving the cartridges stored in the magazine into a position where they may be chambered by the action of the firearm. Most magazines designed for use with a reciprocating bolt firearm utilize a set of feed lips which stops the vertical motion of the cartridges out of the magazine, but allows one cartridge at a time to be pushed forward (stripped) out of the feed lips by the firearm's bolt into the chamber.
Some form of spring and follower combination is almost always used to feed cartridges to the lips, which are typically located in the magazine. A box magazine, the most popular type of magazine in modern rifles and handguns, stores cartridges in a straight or gently curved column, either one above the other or staggered zigzag fashion. As the firearm cycles, cartridges are moved to the top of the magazine by a follower driven by spring compression to either a single feed position or alternating feed positions. A detachable box magazine is a self-contained mechanism capable of being loaded or unloaded while detached from the host firearm.
Military and law enforcement personnel currently rely on four-inch chemical light sticks to mark doorways and other entrances when engaged in close quarter combat and room clearings. Traditional marking techniques employed by modern warfighters pose many challenges. Conventional solutions for storing and dispensing four-inch chemical light sticks are bulky and difficult to employ and prepare, resulting in wasted man hours and frustration.
Therefore, a need exists for a new and improved magazine for light sticks that houses and enables one-handed dispensing and activating of chemical light sticks. In this regard, the various embodiments of the present invention substantially fulfill at least some of these needs. In this respect, the magazine for light sticks according to the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art, and in doing so provides an apparatus primarily developed for the purpose of providing a container that enables one-handed dispensing and activation of chemical light sticks.